Solar System Workings 2018

Critical Dates

Overview

The Solar System Workings (SSW) program is described in Appendix C.3 of the ROSES 2018 NRA.
See the NSPIRES website.

This is a very wide ranging call. While we provide a brief synopsis here,
proposers must refer to the call for specifics.

The Solar System Workings program solicits proposals for innovative scientific research related
to understanding the atmospheric, climatological, dynamical, geologic, physical, and chemical
processes occurring within the Solar System. This program is open to investigations relevant to
surfaces and interiors of planetary bodies, planetary atmospheres, rings, orbital dynamics, and
exospheres and magnetospheres. The Solar System Workings program values the potential of
interdisciplinary efforts to solve key scientific questions. The program also values research in
comparative planetology. Research supported by this call may include data synthesis, laboratory
studies that examine physical or chemical properties and processes, studies of sample or analog
materials of other Solar System bodies, field studies of terrestrial analogs of planetary
environments, or theoretical and numerical modeling of physical or chemical processes.

This program seeks to understand processes that occur throughout the Solar System, as well as
those specific to individual objects and systems, but inform our understanding of the
fundamental processes at work. A nonexhaustive list of areas of research called for in this
solicitation follows. For conciseness in this list, the term "planetary" refers to Solar System
objects other than the Sun (ranging in size from small objects, like comets and asteroids, through
natural satellites, and up to planets) and structures (such as atmospheres, ionospheres, and ring
systems).

Data Sources

The specific data availability and restrictions given for the 2018 SSW are given in
Sections C.3 and C.1 of ROSES 2018:

For volumes at the Ring-Moon Systems Node which meet the SSW basic
eligibility requirements for publicly available timing (based on
the Step 2 Proposal due date), see the Data Status tab.

The Ring-Moon Systems Node generates HST "volumes" which do not contain data. They point to
data maintained at STScI. These volumes identify HST data, in the public domain, which contain observations of one
or more outer planet system(s) (Jupiter through Pluto), and are used to support our search
tool, OPUS.

Our mission information pages provide overviews of data sets and instruments along with
links to detailed descriptions of the instruments and to the data
and to Ring-Moon Systems Node generated browse images and footprint diagrams.

Voyager. Our Voyager pages
support ISS including new data sets of uncompressed, calibrated
and geometrically corrected images, IRIS, and occultation data
from PPS, UVS, and RSS. These pages also provide access to the
Voyager SPICE kernels generated at the Ring-Moon Systems Node.

HST. Our HST page describes our HST holdings including
the volumes in our "HST Observations of the Outer Planets" project which
provide references to HST observations made with either the ACS,
WFC3, or WFPC2 that included an outer planet system. The volumes are updated
periodically.

Uranus Ring Plane Crossing . While
publicly available URPX observations obtained under Planetary
Astronomy Program are covered by this NRA, we do not currently
have any such data. If eligible URPX data becomes available at
the Ring's Node prior to the proposal deadline, this page will
reflect it.

The PDS NAIF Node and observation geometry.

SPICE data and software may be obtained from the
NAIF web site.SPICE
data files contain spacecraft and solar system geometry data
necessary to interpret scientific observations from space-based
instruments. The SPICE system also includes a large suite of
software, mostly in the form of subroutines, that users
incorporate in their own application programs to read SPICE
files and to compute derived observation geometry, such as
altitude, latitude/longitude, and lighting angles.

Additional links within PDS

For more information about proposing with respect to PDS archiving, see the PDS Engineering Node's Information for Proposers web page.

The PDS Engineering Node's ROSES Support pages provides links to ROSES support pages at
other PDS Discipline Nodes

The PDS NAIF Node and observation geometry.

SPICE data and software may be obtained from the
NAIF web site. SPICE
data files contain spacecraft and solar system geometry data
necessary to interpret scientific observations from space-based
instruments. The SPICE system also includes a large suite of
software, mostly in the form of subroutines, that users
incorporate in their own application programs to read SPICE
files and to compute derived observation geometry, such as
altitude, latitude/longitude, and lighting angles.